Re: Live CD as a focal point for reviving Jr development
Marcela,
On Mon, 2005-10-03 at 15:53 -0300, Marcela Tiznado wrote:
> Hi all! I'm new in all this, I have some ideas that would like to
> discuss with you all, and maybe add them on the new version of the live cd.
Welcome to our group.
> - Packages on age groups.
> I think packages should be on groups. I think this clasification would
> be perfect to do it with kindergarden teachers so they know what average
> kids need on each steps. When the parents creates the kid profile (that
> would be nice to save it somehow) would show only the games according to
> its age.
Classifying games by age is a very messy business. Some applications
have very narrow appeal, whereas some have a much broader appeal.
Particularly as kids get older, I think it gets harder and harder to
make categories that make sense.
I think more useful than age-based categories would be tags focused on
skills and interests. Can the application be used without the mouse
(lletters)? Does it require only basic mouse skills (tuxpaint,
gcompris)? Can the application be used without knowing how to read?
etc. It's important to set the bar as low as possible for abilities,
though. For instance, while my three-year-old cannot read, she can
type, so she enjoys playing tuxtype. I have a less clear notion of how
we'd come up with useful categories for interests. I know in general
children of different ages are interested in different things, not to
mention different gender preferences, but I'm really bad at predicting
those interests in individual kids, even when those kids are my own.
They're constantly surprising me.
> - Internet filter
> Would be nice to have some panel where the parents can configure the
> livecd to conect to internet or not. Have a dansguardian or something to
> filter contents.
Filtering has come up before. Search the list archives. I'm in favour
of supporting parents who want to do it, but not actually providing the
filtering in Debian Jr. or recommending one package over another. In an
institutional environment, this is a server issue, and therefore outside
of Debian Jr.'s mandate to address. At home, I recommend that parents
keep computers in a visible area and guide children in their use of
them. I find this an effective way to address the problem with my own
family, and have anecdotal evidence from other parents that this works
for them as well.
> - Colorful, nice, etc. Clear big icons for little kids.
Sure.
> If this means toooo many info....is possible to do a DVDlive?
I think there are some usability factors addressed by the big GNOME/KDE
environments, particularly for older kids who may have digital cameras
and usb devices that they want to plug in and have "just work". I can't
imagine putting together a feature-rich GNOME or KDE-based livecd and
have everything fit (particularly if you're going to include any games
with large data components). A DVD would definitely be the way to go if
we're aiming the live media at that kind of user.
> Would be nice to have an alioth project, with a wiki to put to-do
> things, screenshots, etc etc etc .. Our own alioth project would be nice.
The good news is we already have some material on the "cdd" alioth
project. For ease of administration I want to continue to put our
material there.
> Then the same packages included on the live cd might also packaged as
> debian packages, for example having junior-3yearsold.deb
I'm not sure metapackages are the way it will go. The structure
provided by cdd-dev is quite different.
> Thats all till now :)
> ASCIIGirl
Thanks for your ideas,
Ben
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